One expert has outlined a number of tips and tricks that can help stop people dominating the proceedings of a business meeting.

Cited by businessinsider.com, Kellogg School of Management professor Leigh Thompson believes that during an eight person meeting in a conference space, three people do around 70 per cent of the talking.

While this leads to alienation in the other five participants, it also creates to problem of “production blocking” when people attempt to speak over one another, adds noticebrd.com.

In order to tackle these problems, Thompson suggests a technique called ‘brainwriting’. This involves participants writing down their ideas on cards anonymously as it “significantly increases idea output”. Following on, one person reads out the ideas and the room decides whether each issue needs to be flagged.

Thompson also suggests a method called Nominal Group Technique.

“Instead of having people in defined groups, have people work independently on a task or idea generation, then pool the results later on. These sorts of groups have been found to significantly outperform interactive groups for brainstorming tasks,” she said.

Finally rather than talking, meeting attendees should type ideas anonymously into a central discussion board, which helps to prevent dominant personalities from taking over a discussion. Trying out an alternative meeting structure also helps to break a team out of a ‘frustrating rut’, according to Thompson.